Reproductive Health Act

Why Abortion Rights Groups Are Fighting Their Battles At The State Level In 2019

By Monica Busch
Feb 13, 2019

Abortion rights advocates are upfront about the fact that they believe there are currently very real, tangible threats to Roe v. Wade, especially given the Supreme Court's conservative majority. With this in mind, some organizations say they are spending more time advocating for state-level abortion laws in order to protect access in as many places as possible, should the landmark ruling one day be overturned.

"The truth is, it begins and ends in the state. Even our best [rulings], like Roe v. Wade, came from a challenge to a restrictive Texas law that criminalized abortion," Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH) and the NIRH Action Fund, tells Bustle. "The reality is that states have long been the arbiters of whether or not women are able to access reproductive health care, and whether their rights are going to be protected."

The Catholic Church Has No Moral Argument on Abortions
After the pope revealed nuns were forced to get abortions while being held as sex slaves, the Church doesn’t seem well positioned to lecture on what women should or should not do with their bodies.

By Jennifer Wright
Feb 11 2019

If you are going to get your information regarding abortion from anyone, perhaps it is best not to get it from an institution that has no women in its higher orders, and is keeping women as sex slaves.

Like, for instance, the Catholic Church. This week Pope Francis admitted there has been clerical abuse of nuns, including sexual slavery. The BBC reports, "He said the Church was attempting to address the problem but said it was 'still going on.'"

When Your President Calls You a Murderer
I have had a third-trimester abortion. And I am not alone.

Feb 6, 2019
T.S. Mendola

It’s a hell of a thing to hear your president call you a murderer.

That’s not quite the whole picture, though, of what President Donald Trump did to later abortion patients during the State of the Union speech Tuesday night. After he invoked the Madonna, a “beautiful image of a mother holding her infant child,” women abruptly vanished for the rest of the time he took to throw enough red meat to the anti-choice base to keep money from the evangelical coffers flowing. Instead, we disappeared into the “womb” from which “beautiful” babies are “ripped moments before birth;” we are nothing more than the “womb” in which “children … can feel pain.”

Why Trump spent so much time criticizing abortion during the State of the Union
He may see it as a winning issue for 2020.

By Anna North
Feb 5, 2019

“Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life,” said President Donald Trump during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. “And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: All children — born and unborn — are made in the holy image of God.”

In uncharacteristically extensive comments on the subject, Trump criticized efforts to loosen abortion restrictions in New York and Virginia. He also called for federal anti-abortion legislation.

New York State has enacted new legislation meant to protect abortion rights against any rollbacks from the U.S. Supreme Court or the Trump administration -- and critics are fuming.

“New York abortion law allows for barbaric butchering of the innocent,” a headline in a Jan. 27 opinion piece in The Washington Times read. “New York’s new abortion law is evil codified,” opined an Associated Press columnist today.

Reproductive rights advocates in Massachusetts and across the country are launching aggressive campaigns for the new year to bolster access to abortion services in left-leaning states, in anticipation of further restrictions in conservative ones.

The effort is part of a nationwide strategy by groups, including Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, to create safe havens for women seeking abortion services at a time when a newly conservative Supreme Court could overturn the 46-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling that made abortion legal.

New York puts in measures to protect access to abortion even if Roe v. Wade is overturned

by Tony Marco, CNN
Wed January 23, 2019

New York (CNN)On the 46th anniversary of Roe V. Wade, New York state passed a law to protect women's access to abortion if the historic case is overturned.
"Today we are taking a giant step forward in the hard-fought battle to ensure a woman's right to make her own decisions about her own personal health, including the ability to access an abortion. With the signing of this bill, we are sending a clear message that whatever happens in Washington, women in New York will always have the fundamental right to control their own body," said Gov. Andrew Cuomo after signing New York's Reproductive Health Act on Tuesday night.\

Not only will the law preserve access to abortions, it also removes abortion from the state's criminal code. This would protect doctors or medical professionals who perform abortions from criminal prosecution. The law also now allows medical professionals who are not doctors to perform abortions in New York.

Roe v. Wade is at risk, but abortion rights groups see surprising opportunities for gains
The Kavanaugh confirmation battle has Americans ready to fight for abortion access, advocates say.

By Anna North
Jan 22, 2019

The most surprising thing about the abortion rights movement in 2019 is the optimism.

The potential deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade sits on the Supreme Court. A wave of strict anti-abortion laws are passing in states from Ohio to Mississippi. In the midst of a government shutdown, Republicans in Congress put forth a bill to shore up restrictions on federal funding for abortions (it failed).

How Abortion Law in New York Will Change, and How It Won’t
The Reproductive Health Act will remove barriers for women seeking to get abortions in New York. But some wish it could have gone further.

By Jia Tolentino
January 19, 2019

In the late spring of 2016, Erika Christensen was thirty-one weeks pregnant, and found out that the baby she was carrying would be unable to survive outside the womb. Her doctor told her that he was “incompatible with life.” Christensen and her husband wanted a child desperately—they called him Spartacus, because of how hard he seemed to be fighting—but she decided, immediately, to terminate the pregnancy: if the child was born, he would suffer, and would not live long; she wanted to minimize his suffering to whatever extent she could.

Christensen lived in New York, a state where, since 2014, an estimated twenty-five to twenty-seven per cent of pregnancies end in abortion.